A Portrait of the Human Experience

In this episode of The Common People Podcast we take a detour. Actually, detour might not be the appropriate word here. It’s more of a complete makeover than a detour. In the first 19 episodes of the podcast we heard from an awesome mix of people, but sometimes we left ourselves wondering, as great as it is to listen to these people and their stories, can’t we bring them to life? Turn these soundbites and figments of the imagination into something so tangible that they have real form. So we are pleased to announce with The CPP’s transition to video that we feel like the blind man who has spent a lifetime in darkness only to wake up one day with his vision restored.

This first video episode of the podcast takes you on a tour of Los Angeles. Hear it, see it, experience it. We hope you enjoy, thanks for checking us out!

On New Year’s Eve, I attempted to compile a cross section of the hopes and dreams of people as they were gearing up for an epic 2015. I arrived at Penn Station with a couple of hours left in 2014 – as the anticipation of the New Year was starting to build – and I walked all around this magnificent train depot asking random people about their resolutions and goals for 2015.

I started the night by hanging around the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) tracks and surrounding eating establishments, then I briefly popped onto the subway platforms before moving on to the NJ Transit and Amtrak areas. With a few minutes left before the New Year, I made my way up to the streets and walked towards Times Square. In this episode, you will hear what people had to say. Thanks for tuning in!

“I love goats, something I did not do for the great bulk of my years on this planet. I love their insouciance, their curiosity, their authority issues, their rapt fascination with almost everything. Living with all of these other animals who revere me for taking care of them, it’s refreshing to have goats who regularly nip the hand that feeds them.”

While hanging out with a good friend one night, I disclosed to him that I had started meditating. He saw this as a golden opportunity to kick off an intricate, elaborate, well-executed series of events that added up to an epic prank. The prank started in January 2014 and finally came to an end five months later in June. He now considers this prank to be his personal masterpiece, a lifetime of experience culminating in this work of art. At times during that five month span I was confused, paranoid and on the verge of contacting the authorities. In this episode we recount the events that transpired during that period.

And on a related note, any episode that we post on a Friday (such as this one) will be of a different theme than the other episodes in the podcast. The goal of the Friday episodes is just to have fun and goof off.